Faculty

Ted Cohen | John Durst | Mary Howard | Akbar Mahdi | Jim Peoples | Jan Smith | Dan Steward | Pam Laucher

Ted Cohen

Theodore Cohen Department Chairperson, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Elliott Hall 212 740-368-3837 740-368-3644 (fax) tfcohen@owu.edu B.A., Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 1977 M.A. (1981), Ph.D. (1986), Boston University

Ted Cohen has been at Ohio Wesleyan since 1984.  Although Dr. Cohen also teaches courses in research methods and deviance, his research and teaching areas center around the study of family life. He is the co-author of the textbook,  The Marriage and Family Experience (10th ed.) (Cengage. 2008) and the editor of a text-reader on men and gender, Men & Masculinity: A Text Reader. He also has published articles and book chapters on aspects of men's lives, especially their transitions to marriage and fatherhood, and their respective involvements in work, marriage, and parenthood. His latest research examined the novel lifestyles of a sample of role reversed and opposite shift couples. In 1990, Dr. Cohen received The Sherwood Dodge Shankland Award for the Encouragement of Teachers.

Courses Taught: Introduction to Sociology, Research Methods, Crime and Deviance, The Family, Gender in American Society

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John Durst

John Durst Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Slocum Hall 335 740-368-3090 740-368-3644 (fax) jcdurst@owu.edu B.A., Kent State University, 1971 M.A., Ohio University, 1974 Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1994

John Durst has been at Ohio Wesleyan since 1986. Previously, Dr. Durst taught at Ohio University and Ohio State University. Dr. Durst's research interests are in the area of family life, criminology and mental health. His dissertation was a work on prison organization entitled, "Social and Structural Factors which Influence Prison Environments." Currently, along with colleague Dr. Ted Cohen, he is in the final stages of writing and publishing a work in the family area which examines unique family lifestyles, particularly where there is a greater amount of fatherhood involvement than normal. He is in the data collection stages of a study that will compare the outcome differences of a mentally ill criminal offender being placed in a prison environment versus a forensic mental health unit. Most of all, after 25 years of teaching Dr. Durst still enjoys the classroom and interacting with his students.

Courses Taught: Crime and Deviance; Race and Ethnicity; Introduction to Sociology; The Family, Methods of Social Research

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Mary Howard

Dr. Mary T. Howard Professor of Anthropology Elliott Hall 312 740-368-3836 740-368-3644 (fax) mthowd@owu.edu B.A., Ohio Dominican College, 1967 M.A., Michigan State University, 1970 Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1980

Mary Howard’s special areas of interests include psychological and medical anthropology which stem from 16 years of work in mental and medical health care settings. This includes 5 years of research and work in East Africa which was the basis of her 1997 co-authored book, Hunger and Shame: Poverty and Child Malnutrition on Mt. Kilimanjaro. She has completed a manuscript called Home, which details four years of her life managing a group home for people with mental and physical disabilities. Since coming to Ohio Wesleyan in 1985, Dr. Howard has been involved with problems of poverty in Columbus, Ohio, and has filmed two documentaries, Cloud People and Outreach, which examine the city's response to homelessness. She has also finished a feature length draft of a film called Outsiders, which tells the stories of hundreds of Columbus citizens who survive outside in their cars, under highway overpasses and in tent and shanty communities near downtown.

Dr. Howard has lived for extended periods in Taiwan, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, India and Bolivia. She has led student trips to Haiti, The Dominican Republic, India and Mexico and has traveled in Europe, Pakistan, Nepal, Brazil, Peru and throughout the African continent. These experiences have enhanced her cross-cultural comparisons in the classroom and have inspired many students' career interests in public health and international development work.

Ohio Wesleyan has honored Dr. Howard with the following awards:

Courses Taught: Cultural Anthropology; Health, Illness, Disability, Death and Dying; Perspectives on Africa; Population Problems; Appalachian and Amish Cultures; Caribbean Seminar; Gender in Cross Cultural Perspective; Self and Society; Feminist Anthropology; Senior Seminar; Ethnographic and Documentary Film and Filmmaking

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Akbar Mahdi

Ali Akbar Mahdi Professor Emeritus, Sociology B.A., National University of Iran, 1975 M.A., Michigan State University, 1979 Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1983 aamahdi@owu.edu http://go.owu.edu/~aamahdi/

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Jim Peoples

Dr. Peoples in a Korean restaurant with the students in his “Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific” class, fall semester, 2006.

James Peoples Professor of Anthropology Director, East Asian Studies Elliott Hall 309 740-368-3839 740-368-3644 (fax) jgpeople@owu.edu B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz, 1970 Ph.D., University of California, 1977

Professor Peoples came to Ohio Wesleyan in 1988, having previously taught in the anthropology departments of the University of California, Davis, and the University of Tulsa. His main anthropological fieldwork was on Kosrae, a small island in the Federated States of Micronesia, where he studied the impact of American subsidies on the island’s agricultural and cash economy. Dr. Peoples' first book, Island in Trust, published in 1985, summarized the results of this field research. He is the co-author of Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, a textbook now in its eighth edition. He also co-authored Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, published in 1999 and Essentials of Cultural Anthropology, published in 2002. He has written numerous articles for professional journals and scholarly monographs, most recently in 2007. His recent research is a large-scale, comparative analysis of political evolution on over twenty Micronesian islands. Within social/cultural anthropology his research are in interactions between humans and the natural environment, peoples of Oceania, East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan), and cultural evolution.

Since 2002, Dr. Peoples has served as Director of East Asian Studies, an interdisciplinary major at Ohio Wesleyan. In recent years, he has journeyed to South Korea and Japan, attending faculty development seminars and learning from site visits. Most of his future work will be in East Asia.

Click here to view the Appendix "The Internet and Anthropology" from Dr. Peoples' book, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.

Courses Taught: Cultural Anthropology; Prehistory of North America; Human Ecology; Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific; Cultures of East Asia; Native American Cultures of the Southwest; Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion; Problems in Prehistory; Perspectives on World Hunger; Families: Evolution and Cultures; Cultural and Social Change

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Jan Smith

Jan Smith Professor Emeritus of Sociology Elliott Hall 210 740-368-3838 740-368-3644 (fax) jssmith@columbus.rr.com B.A. Antioch College, 1966 Ph.D. Princeton University, 1971

Jan Smith has been on the faculty at Ohio Wesleyan since 1977. From 1970 to 1977, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1983, on leave from Ohio Wesleyan, he taught for Syracuse University in the United Kingdom. Dr. Smith's research interests include contemporary social theory, the history of sociological thought, economic institutions, the sociology of knowledge, and social change. He has published scholarly articles in the American Journal of Sociology, the Review of the Society for General Systems Research, the Social Science Microcomputer Review, and in other journals and readers in the social sciences. Dr. Smith's current research identifies the basic attributes of human nature and social interaction and derives causal explanations of modern social institutions. He has presented selected parts of his manuscript-in-progress at annual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics.

Courses Taught: Social Problems, Social Inequality, Sociology of Knowledge, Organizational Structure, Social Theory

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Daniel Steward

Elliott Hall 209
djstewar@owu.edu
740-368-3924
740-368-3644 (fax)

Assistant Professor Dan Steward has joined the staff for 2009-10.  Mr. Steward received his B.A. in Philosophy and Economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, and his M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He is completing his dissertation entitled “Censorship-Sensors in Civil Society”.  Daniel’s research interests include social theory, theories of justice, sociology of science and technology (cyberspace), and sociology of law.  Mr. Steward has been a visiting faculty member at Montana State University and Oberlin College.  He has also been an associate attorney for two law firms in San Francisco, California. 

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Pam Laucher

Mrs. Pamala L. Laucher Academic Secretary Elliott Hall 211 740-368-3906 740-368-3644 (fax) pllauche@owu.edu

Pam’s history with Ohio Wesleyan began back in 1972 when she (then Pam Skidmore) was hired as the Receptionist/Secretary for the Office of Academic Affairs. During the years 1972-1985 she continued to work in Academic Affairs, ending her first cycle here as Administrative Assistant to the Deans of Academic Affairs and Educational Services. 

After several years as a stay-at-home Mom to two sons, followed by six years as the secretary at Calvary United Methodist Church in Marion, Ohio, Pam returned “home” to Ohio Wesleyan. In August of 2000, following the retirement of Mrs. Janice Schroeder, Pam was hired as Academic Secretary to the Department of Politics and Government, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, and the International Studies and Pre-Law Programs.

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